Studies of intellectual realism have shown that children aged 7 to 9 copy a line drawing of a cube less accurately than a non-object pattern composed of the same lines (Phillips, Hobbs, & Pratt, 1978). However, it remains unclear whether performance is worse on the cube because it is a three-dimensional representation, or because it is a meaningful object, or both. The accuracy with which twenty 7-year-old and twenty 9-year-old children reproduced 16 line drawings of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects and non-objects was assessed. Older children copied all types of drawing more accurately than younger participants, and children of all ages copied two-dimensional drawings more accurately than three-dimensional. Meaningfulness interacted with dimensionality for ratings of drawing accuracy, assisting the copying of two-dimensional drawings, but having no impact on the copying of three-dimensional drawings. For an objective measure based on position, length, and orientation of line, meaningfulness interacted with age group, being beneficial for 7- but not 9-year-olds. Overall, the results imply that, contrary to previous suggestions, meaningfulness can actually be beneficial to copying.